Latest Kindle Estimate: 5.4 Million Since August (AMZN, AAPL)

An analyst estimates that Amazon has sold 5.4 million Kindles since releasing the Kindle 3 and lowering prices across the product line in August.

Amazon has called the Kindle 3, released in October, its best selling product ever, but has refused to disclose exact sales numbers. An earlier report from Bloomberg estimated that Amazon will sell more than 8 million Kindles in 2010.

According to AppleInsider, analyst Ming-Chi Kuo of Concord Equity Research also says that Amazon produced 1.6 million Kindles in December, matching the production of Apple's iPads during the month. The catch: Apple apparently ramped production down from 2.1 million in anticipation of the iPad 2, which could be announced as early as January. Kuo formerly served as a reporter for Taiwan's Digitimes, which has been the source of many recent rumors about the iPad 2.

The iPad can serve as an electronic book reader, but Amazon CEO Jeff Bezosrecently claimed that many consumers buy both devices: the Kindle for reading books, the iPads for games, movies, and Web browsing.